Is there an Android equivalent of diskutil?

Question

I'm a Mac and Android user. I've used simple commands in the Terminal from time to time. But now I'm trying to understand the Terminal Emulator included in the Rom Toolbox app for my Android.

What I'm really trying to accomplish right now is finding if there's an equivalent of diskutil on Android. I just want something simple enough to do disk erases and formatting, etc..

Is this possible, or can I somehow use bash commands like on my Mac? (Sorry I'm very new to this)

Anyway, thanks for reading my question. If you have and questions for me, in order to progress my search, please feel free to ask.

Dilberted · Answer 1 · 2012-02-24T06:33:40.383

1

The android terminal emulator uses busybox linux. Hence you should look at the busybox commands to find out what all you can do with it.

Follow this link

try this command

fdformat DEVICE eg. fdformat /dev/sdcard

edited Feb 24 '12 at 06:33

answered Feb 24 '12 at 06:03

Dilberted

189
7

I'm really trying to not use OS X.. That's the whole point of the post... – James Litewski Feb 24 '12 at 06:11
oops i misunderstood your question, though it was not very clear. But anyways I have edited my answer. – Dilberted Feb 24 '12 at 06:32
or try this .. busybox fdformat [-n] DEVICE – Dilberted Feb 24 '12 at 06:38
did the command work? – Dilberted Feb 24 '12 at 08:52
No, it did not work. – James Litewski Feb 24 '12 at 18:01
You might need to check your Busybox install. I found that when I reinstalled a new BB version I was able to use functions I hadn't been able to previously. – Mr. Buster Apr 24 '12 at 18:12

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '12 at 17:51

What I'm really trying to accomplish right now is finding if there's an equivalent of diskutil on Android. I just want something simple enough to do disk erases and formatting, etc..

If you specify your question a little bit it might be easier to answer. You can both erase files and format partitions straight from the terminal. You remove files with rm, for safe deletions there's also shred. If binaries are not on your phone, you should be able to just install them to /bin/ or /usr/bin/

Formatting in Linux can be done for example with the fdisk command, some more info on that here, or as always you can do man fdisk (probably not on the phone terminal though as manuals might not be included).

Also, in relation to the other reply on busybox: What is Busybox?

Is there an Android equivalent of diskutil?

2 Answers2